I’ve met Eleonora Stefanel prepared with a list of questions and determined to cover all the novelties of the season. Her gentle presence turned the interview into a cozy conversation that captured the creative metabolism of Stefanel’s latest autumn / winter collection.

So here you have the profile of the the Stefanel collection, as described by its main creative references.

THE COLORS
“We’ve started the first part of the collection with dark grey and burgundy, with touches of hot pink. This color is very important this season, as one could have  probably observed in all the fashion shows. Afterwards, we started to get into the more wintery part with military green, blue and a graphic black and white combination. We match different kind of patterns like stripes, pinstripes, polka dots and small flowers prints, creating the most various black and white combinations. And then we got to the last part of the color range with dark blue and antique rose. I definitely like blue and the black and white combination.”

THE FABRICS
“The “sweater dressing” trend makes us very happy, because Stefanel has a tradition with knitwear. Let me put it this way: if I would take this collection on the theater stage, then knitwear would definitely be the protagonist. We not only have jumpers, but there are also pants, dresses and even coats in this fabric. So it covers the whole range”

THE CONCEPT
“The previous FEEL MORE concept had a great resonance in the mind of the consumer and it did a great job. With this season though, we wanted to move to a new, different reference that people would strongly relate to. Our belonging to the Italian design is a strong statement that needs to be emphasized. For quite some time we somehow of took it for granted. With the “Stefanel of Italy” we want to stress the fact that we have strong Italian roots and ample International views.”

THE ITALIAN WAY
“We have very well established designers like Prada, Versace, Armani then and we have the young designers that still need to find their way in the industry. This combination leads to a very contemporary design, with a strong Italian reference, but with a large international approach”

THE COMBINATION
“We’ve made some experiments, starting with the last spring -summer collection. And it happened because we wanted to match the comfort of knitwear with the shape of certain fabrics. So we doubled the knitwear with fabrics in order to give that structure, that otherwise knitwear did not have. So we are experimenting this new way of matching knitwear. The combination of knitwear and nylon is also a trademark of Stefanel. We wanted to show to our customer how to experience the technical nylon jacket in a Stefanel way. So matching knitwear with the down jacket meant putting our cozy signature on this item.”

THE MOODBOARD
“We started the collection with the image of a military cape that we had in our archives. And this is why we created some pieces to get the military mood into this collection. Also, the velvet was very inspiring for us this season and we wanted to bring it back on the spotlight. The images of Tom Ford in the Gucci days and his iconic velvet jacket in the ’90 were definitely on our moodboard.”

THE ITALIAN WORD
“CIAO”. It is also very Italian, but now it has entered the international language.”

THE WOMAN
“She has determination. This is a trait that I really admire in a woman.”